Where the Milk Goes
by str4yk1tt3n
Summary: John has often wondered why it seems that he needs to buy milk every time he stops at the store. He has his theories, of course. Total crack one-shot.


It was the kind of day that made John honestly miss the desert.

He was a proper British boy, born and raised: tea and crumpets with a spot of jam, tubes and trains and heading down to the pub for a pint with your mates after a nice game of footy in the park. The cool chill of a misty London night felt like home. As sand had abraded his skin and stung his eyes and rubbed it's way into every nook and cranny, as heat had bounced off of the barren ground around him and scorched his fair skin golden, he had thought wistfully of foggy evenings tucked into narrow streets between buildings of stone and brick.

But never of this.

Never the drizzling _pissing_ rain, bringing with it the damp bitter chill that soaked through cotton and wool and skin and muscle and all the way into your bones. That always managed to drip down the back of your collar and trickle along your spine. That _should_ leave the city sparkling and new, but somehow makes it feel grimy and tarnished.

Therefore, John was thinking fond thoughts of sun-baked rocks and fine dry sand and an atmosphere so arid that your sweat evaporates as soon as it beads on your skin, when he stepped in a puddle deep enough to submerge his entire left foot. Sighing in resigned annoyance, he stepped out of the small pool and made a cursory attempt to shake his foot dry, but by the sodden squelch in his shoe when he began walking again, it was a lost cause.

That was when his mobile chimed, indicating that he had just received an incoming text message.

He sincerely hoped it wasn't Bart's. Sarah had apologetically informed him earlier that day that he MIGHT be on call that evening, because two doctors and four nurses were out with the 'flu, due to the bloody awful weather, and if they were short-handed, they might have to pull him in to help with the overflow. He had assured her that he understood and that it wasn't a problem, but where the prospect of a double shift was slightly daunting when in a warm, dry, hospital, it was astonishingly exhausting when slogging home with an aching shoulder and a wet sock sliding and bunching under his foot.

Hopefully it would just be Sherlock.

Wait, strike that. A text from Sherlock would likely mean running around dirty back alleys of London in the continual, vile rain, possibly getting shot at, having to leap over rooftops (much easier for ridiculous people with ridiculous long legs than for normal-sized...well okay, slightly short...people like John), abuse from Donovan and Anderson, rudeness from Sherlock, getting strangled or even all of the above. None of which particularly put John off, save the rain. But as rain WAS a part of the evening's equation, all he really wanted right now was to go home, change into his favorite pair of worn sweat pants and an old shirt from uni (and oh god, dry socks) and curl up in his arm chair with a cup of tea and watch bad telly while Sherlock interjected acerbically about the acting/writing/casting/research/cinematography/random tree in the background. (The last _had_ happened. Four times.)

He pulled out his mobile and steeled himself before pushing the 'message' button.

_message received:_

**We need milk. SH**

Huh. Well, that wasn't-

Milk? AGAIN?

John could have sworn he had gotten milk two days prior, and he himself had only used it in his tea once a day since. That did not account for an entire carton of milk.

He never saw Sherlock drink the stuff, but at the rate that it disappeared from the fridge, it was clearly being used by him for _something_, as, when John was left to his own devices the milk inevitably went off and had to be binned before it all got used.

_message sent:_

**Fine. I'll stop the Tesco. **

Over his time living with Sherlock, John had actually come up with a number of theories as to exactly where all the milk went.

1.) Used in an experiment.

This seemed to be the most reasonable assumption, yet John had never seen any evidence in it's favor: a combination of organic chemistry knowledge left from his medical school days, the active search for the missing milk, and general self-preservation had prompted him to look in on Sherlock's experiments with some degree of regularity, and he had not once seen a sign of dairy products other than the processed cheese on which Sherlock attempted to grow mold. (And he wasn't sure that even properly counted as dairy, considering the massive failure of the experiment.)

2. Sherlock needed the extra calcium to support all those ridiculous long bones.

Though John had not seen any evidence of Sherlock drinking excessive amounts of milk, John supposed he could always be doing it while John was out of the flat.

3. Some sort of sex thing?

This was a theory not because it seemed at all LIKELY, but just because John was running out of plausible explanations, or even halfway plausible explanations. And while this theory was clearly reaching quite a bit, everyone had their own kinks. Maybe even Sherlock. John didn't consider himself one to judge.

4. Feeding orphans.

In John's defense, there HAD been a marathon of Dickens movies on the week he had come up with that theory. But, he figured, what with Sherlock's homeless network, perhaps somewhere he had a soft spot for the bedraggled children, shivering on the street. And thought that milk was the thing to give them. ...In John's defense, did he mention, there HAD been a marathon of Dickens movies on the week he had come up with the theory.

5. Feeding a brownie that secretly did all of Sherlock's deduction for him and then told Sherlock in the secret language of the fairies, while perched invisibly on Sherlock's shoulder.

This was John's favorite. Probably because he knew it would cause Sherlock to glare at him in annoyance before explaining how little sense it made.

6. Hyper-localized alien abduction limited to the inside of their refrigerator.

Well...they were said to mutilate cows, weren't they? And milk comes FROM cows. No, it didn't make sense to John either.

_message received:_

**Are you back yet? SH**

_message sent:_

**No, S, I'm in line the checkout. Have u ever even heard of patience?**

_message received:_

**Patience is for people with nothing better to do. And the abbreviations in your messages are annoying and distracting. You should take the time to type words out. SH**

_message received:_

**Especially my name. SH**

_message sent:_

**Stop bothering me about my texting or I'll do it even worse. I'll be home soon. **

_message received:_

**It can get worse? John, inputting full words makes you look more professional, makes your texts easier to read and by putting in the extra effort, you are bound to improve your speed. SH**

_message sent:_

**Srsly S, u can b so irritating sometimes. g2g, checkout.** **B home soon.**

John smiled as the mobile chimed again from his pocket, blissfully ignoring it as he paid for his milk and a packet of Jammy Dodgers (it had been a long day. Biscuits and tea were definitely in order).

Unfortunately, his cheer dissipated as he stepped out of the Tesco and found that it seemed to be drizzling more enthusiastically than it had been before, and rain seemed to have become cold enough that only an act of providence was preventing it from simply raining ice. Which, honestly, might have been an improvement, as ice can be brushed off of hair and shoulders, unlike rain, which is just very wet and cold and determined to ruin one's day.

By the time he reached the front door of 221b, his other foot had a taken a (slightly less impressive) soaking, his fringe was dripping in his eyes and his shoulder was a knot of angry aching.

His mobile chimed again. Sighing, he looped the Tesco bag over his wrist and fished the phone out of his pocket.

_message received:_

**Is that you? What took so long? SH**

John rolled his eyes as he slid the phone back in his pocket and wiggled the key in the lock. Stepping inside, he called out to his flatmate.

"Oi, Mr. Impatient! I'm back."

The response came from the far end of the flat. "Oh, John, good! Come in here right away."

"Okay," John replied. "Just let me put the milk in the fridge."

"What? No...it's fine. Just bring it with you."

At Sherlock's clear and continued impatience, John felt the slightest trickle of alarm (though it may have simply been a few more errant drops of rainwater sliding out of his hair and under his collar). He hurried towards Sherlock's voice, wondering if he was about to find the detective handcuffed to something, bleeding out on the floor or suffering chemical burns from an experiment gone awry. Sherlock did occasionally come across as bizarrely unconcerned by dangerous and life-threatening situations.

He hurried toward the bathroom, running over triage procedures, emergency phone numbers and locations of both of their passports in his head.

Therefore, when he reached his destination, he was prepared for pretty much anything.

Except, of course, he had Sherlock as a flatmate, which rather guaranteed that the truth of the situation would be something that hadn't factored into his calculations at all.

He had expected injury, angst or criminal activity.

What he found instead, however, was his flatmate immersed in a steaming bath of cloudy liquid...or at least, immersed as far as he could be, lanky knees jutting above the near-opaque infusion, wrists draped languorously over tub sides, head tilted back against the porcelain, exposing the ludicrously long, pale neck, closed lashes painting darker crescents across the shadows of sleeplessness under his eyes.

Unsure what to make of the spectacle, John contemplated and discarded several responses before settling on just standing halfway through the doorway in confusion.

"John?"

"Um."

Sherlock opened his eyes and lifted his head off the rim of the tub. "You have the milk?"

John blinked. He blinked again. Okay, this certainly wasn't the strangest conversation he had ever had with Sherlock. Not even in the strangest place. "Um. Yes."

"Good." Sherlock stared at John expectantly.

John looked back at Sherlock, waiting for him to (again) realize that not everyone was privy to his accelerated thought processes.

Sherlock huffed out a sigh and rolled his eyes. "John, pour the milk into the bath."

John had his hand halfway into the Tesco bag before he stopped, realizing. "Sherlock...are you taking a _milk bath_?"

"I would think that obvious," Sherlock said, in his trademarked exasperated-by-the-idiots-around-me tone.

"So...do you do this often then?"

"Well, yes...I've done so most of my life. How on earth do _you_ think I keep my skin so nice?"

"I...I hadn't really thought about it, to be honest." John closed his eyes, massaging the bridge of his nose where he felt the first prickle of a Sherlock headache forming. "So, I take it this is where all the milk has been going?"

"Clearly. Are you telling me you weren't aware of this? The slight scent of milk in the bath? My skin? The great quantity of milk that we use up?"

"Well, I was aware that milk seemed to be disappearing rather more quickly than seemed normal. But I may have missed the rest of it."

"How many times do I have to tell you, John...you see, but you-"

"Don't observe. Right. Working on that."

"Where exactly did you think the milk was _going_?"

John shifted. "Well..I had my theories."

"Let me guess...that Mycroft was coming over while we were out and using it to wash down a giant cake every other day? Because, though I admit that emotions aren't really my area, I think that's a bit mean, John."

John snickered in spite of himself. "Well, that DID occur to me, of course, but seeing as the milk was far more likely to disappear on days when you were in the flat than when it was empty, that didn't seem like it fit."

Sherlock beamed at him. "John! Making fun of Mycroft AND making a passable deduction! We'll make a proper consulting detective's assistant of you yet!"

"Thanks," John said wryly. "And now that I know the milk is part of your beauty regime, you can buy it yourself."

Sherlock glared back at him. "You buy my conditioner."

John sighed. "No," he said, "I buy _my_ conditioner and you use it all."

The side of Sherlock's mouth twitched in a small smile as he rested his head back against the side of the tub and closed his eyes. "I like yours." He blinked and looked at John again, clearly waiting.

"Oh fine. But I'm keeping enough for my tea."

He grabbed his towel on the way out and toweled his hair dry as he walked towards his room. Ten minutes later he was curled up on the sofa with a cup of hot tea, a plate of biscuits and an episode of Black Books. Twenty minutes later, Sherlock plopped down next to him and took of tea John held out to him, then leaned against his shoulder to read the blog he was laboriously typing out.

"That has...no, horrible has two 'r's. You should know that."

"This show is insipid. That doctor clearly never went to medical school, as ingestion of a book that small, if choking had been avoided-what? John, must you keep your elbows so pointy?"

Sherlock reached across John for a cookie and John smiled. At least he had dry socks now. And he finally knew where all the milk was going.


End file.
